"I'm in Paris and I ordered a coffee with oat milk and the waiter said no." These are literally the words that make up one of the most relevant tweets of last year. The phrase of the comedian Andy Haynes provoked reactions around the world, including insults, enthusiastic applause to the response of the waiter, sharp jokes and disquisitions about the search for the meaning of life in a world that disintegrates between fatuous fires and cerebral flatulence caused more by mental intolerance than by the inability of some intestines to process lactose.
At that moment, servidora had her share of the cake of expletives: it occurred to me to share the phrase accompanied by "this is the way", and I fell virtual hosts like bread, which I already expected and picked up pleased: I like a tangana more than a fool a pen, and I am in the networks for the laughter. But I do not intend to leave the subject there and retire to my chambers without first clarifying a couple of things.
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The first violent barrage came from the lactose intolerant sector, which interpreted my position as a form of discrimination and a lack of sensitivity for their medical condition. Defect of empathy, I have, before his demand for a coffee with milk without milk but with milk, and I am happy with the diagnosis drying glasses with parsimony behind the bar, from where the orange juice, the fifths, the medians, the poleomentas, the bitterkas, the sparkling waters and the coffees alone look back at me with a sigh.
We are all born milk drinkers. Babies' intestines produce the enzyme lactase, which breaks down lactose, a complex sugar present in breast milk, into simpler sugars that we can assimilate. But for most humans, production of the enzyme lactase plummets after weaning. From a mammalian perspective, it is normal to be able to tolerate breast milk and, after childhood, stop producing lactase and become lactose intolerant.
About 10,000 years ago, a series of genetic mutations allowed some human groups to maintain lactase production into adulthood, but that's the exception, not the rule, and worldwide, more than two-thirds of the population is considered lactose intolerant, without that being a pathological trait.
In fact, drinking milk in a glass as a regular food is a relatively recent phenomenon. It was not until the early twentieth century, with the introduction of compulsory pasteurization, that milk ceased to be a breeding ground for a multitude of deadly pathogens and became a safe food. That assurance became a good reputation during World War I, when the then-emerging field of nutrition science identified milk, with its high protein and vitamin content, and simple dosage, as an effective remedy against infant mortality.
Today, an adult who drinks milk does so for pleasure. Our post-war concerns have been replaced by the fear of obesity, and the two-thirds of the world who drink milk do not suffer from osteoporosis or rickets; in fact, China and Japan have lower rates of these conditions than Europe. The need to drink milk does not exist.
As for the second artillery barrage, the fire came from the southern bottom of the vegan sector, a particularly noisy faction of that group, champions of an ideology that, despite being born deeply rooted in admirable values of non-aggression, is capable of meeting every two by three in the vortex of the most virulent discussions. and that he insists on seeing me as an old lady in a robe in the middle of the street brandishing a cane in the air against progress.
In vegetable smoothies they see a drug against the evil of eco-anxiety, and the solution to the participation of cows in our food system. I share the vast majority of your concerns, respect for the rest of the members of this our ecosystem, the seamless commitment to the reduction of global meat consumption and the total and absolute eradication of animal abuse in the primary sector, but I insist on considering other human beings also as living beings, in seeing that my freedom ends where the other's begins, and in thinking that my capacity for empathy is not there to compensate for the difficulty of managing the frustration of those who are willing to ride a chicken every time their expectations are not met. Because the ecological arguments of this small group of exalted, who do not represent the entire vegan collective, can only be a smokescreen, if what we are talking about is environmentalism and sustainability around a cup of coffee with milk.
Currently, in the market we can find smoothies of seeds and nuts of all kinds. Even mushrooms. There are more than 70 patents for vegetable smoothies registered. To produce the main brands that we find today in our supermarkets, their manufacturers extract about 200,000 cubic meters of water annually from the springs of Montseny, the natural park that I see from my window. They have continued to do so throughout this terrible drought, until the Riera Major has dried up, and they plan to drill more aquifers to double that figure. Almond milk accounts for about two-thirds of all plant-based milks sold in the world, and it takes four and a half liters of water to grow just one of them.
There is oil available to bring this perfect business of selling bottled water with things to any corner of the globe, because the big industry knows us, and knows that before modeling our palate according to our own free decisions, before taking the trouble to change a single habit, before adapting to the taste of coffee without milk, We will bend anything else. Ecological reasons? See you later.
In a bar, the employer is obliged to comply with current legislation, to comply with all his tax obligations, and to respond for all his commitments to workers, suppliers, creditors and, finally, customers. Before them, his promise is the letter, hanging on the wall at the entrance of the establishment, and which informs of what can be expected in exchange for money. To the question of "what does it cost a bar to have oat milk in the fridge", I answer "the same as you travel with a petaquita in your bag".
There is neither the right to drink milk nor the right not to be offended, nor is there the right to subject the freedom of others to one's own appetites or whims. Given the surprising ability of some to confuse the "I want" or the "I like it" with a "you must satisfy me", my answer is no, and we must see what it costs them to accept a simple "no" to some, being as we are in the era of "no is no" and consent.
In a bar, the obvious lactose-free alternative to a latte is any of the options without the word milk in its name, including coffee alone. If the future we are heading towards is one in which a "no" is perceived as aggression or disrespect, then we are going backwards into a bleak scenario and at a speed that is scary.
Signed, a lactose intolerant, lover of protected springs, who has spent a lifetime enjoying it in bars without giving the turra.